Dream Cameron
by shippershape
Summary: Kirsten falls asleep in the lab and has a dream about Cameron. Cameron just happens to be around when she starts talking in her sleep.


Kirsten never used to dream. As a kid she had nightmares, occasionally, blurs of colour, and shapes, and an abstract feeling of fear that would take hold like a chill in the night. Monsters and demons that you never saw, but she knew they were there, that they were after her, in that way that you just _know_ things in dreams.

But she grew out of those, and then the dreaming stopped altogether. Until the very first stitch.

Now she dreams in a new way, there aren't monsters, usually, and the shapes are solid and real. They're never consistent, but she hears that that's normal. Some nights she closes her eyes and opens them to find morning and recognizes that familiar nothing in between. Some nights there are faces that she doesn't know, faces that belong to people who've been buried in the ground, memories that aren't hers. And some nights she sees Cameron.

To be fair, this isn't a night. It's been days since she's had a good rest, they've been in and out of the lab every few hours dealing with a rash of murders onset by a gang war. So now it's three in the afternoon, and she's nodding off in the briefing room, long legs tucked carefully under her on the plush black office chair.

This dream is warm, bright colours and a sunshine she can almost feel on her skin. She likes when they start off like that, because her demons don't come out in the daylight. She looks to the left and sees Cameron, his face illuminated in the light streaming in through his living room window. They're in his apartment.

"Hi." She says. Dream Cameron is much the same as regular Cameron, he smiles brightly at her.

"Hey, Stretch." His voice is slightly fuzzy, that strange distance you get in dreams, like all of this is in your head but you still have to strain to hear anything. She turns to look out the window.

"What are we doing?"

There's always something. Dream Cameron keeps busy. The week before she'd spent two nights in a row helping him paint his apartment. She'd woken up tired and a little resentful of the fact that his walls were still the same shade of blue.

He frowns at her, thoughtful.

"What if we didn't do anything today?" He asks. She blinks. That's new.

"Then why am I here?" There's always a reason. Whether it's a case she needs to work out, or a personal problem that's bothering her, Dream Cameron always has a plan. This is throwing her off.

"I don't know." He shrugs. "It's your dream, Sleeping Beauty. You tell me."

She stares at him for a moment, prodding gently at the knot of emotions in her stomach. They just appeared one day, after Cameron had woken up, a tangled mess of feelings that she had yet to really catalogue. One in particular twinges now, and she presses her hand to her chest. It's a fluttering, but also a burning. Like her heart is vibrating in her chest, sending heat through the rest of her body. It feels a little like she imagines being electrocuted would. But more pleasant.

"Why are _you_ here?" She presses, and he just smiles again.

"You know, for being the smartest person I know, you've got some light bulbs out." He gently taps her temple. She frowns. Dream Cameron isn't usually so sarcastic.

She can feel a pull to him, almost magnetic, and then she's suddenly a foot closer to him, nose to nose. That's the annoying thing about dreams. Things just happen, rules get broken. He's staring at her, and she can feel his heart beating where their chests are pressed together. If she was warm before she's now starting to feel sticky with sweat and a heat that's coming just as much from her as it is from the sun. Her heart is beating harder, pulse thrumming at her wrists and in her neck. She can feel it between her legs, too, and while that's a feeling she recognizes it's not one she's ever had around Cameron, regular or the Dream-version.

New.

It's the only word she can think of. She's looking into green eyes, and they're warm, but also dark, and something here feels dangerous but she can't quite put her finger on it.

"I didn't know." She says, and she feels so, _so_ , stupid. That one emotion pulls free from the know, finally placed, finally acknowledged.

She wants him. And not in the way she wanted Liam, where her body had needs that had nothing to do with her inability to form meaningful attachments. Not in the way her seventeen year old self had been curious and bored, climbing on top of a boy who looked at her like he'd won the lottery before they fogged up the windows in the backseat of his car. She knows lust, has been with enough men that she couldn't count them on her fingers, but this is not that. Not _just_ that.

This is confusing.

"What is this?" She asks Cameron, who reaches out to run his thumb across her jaw, down her neck. She shivers.

"What do you want it to be?" He asks, leaning down to press his lips gently to a spot under her ear. She almost asks him how he knows, how he found one of the places that makes her eyes drift shut and her whole body feel hot, but then she remembers. He's a figment of her imagination. He knows because she wants him to.

She wants him to.

She reflects on that as he burns a path down her neck with his lips, over her clavicle. It's not real, but it _feels_ real. The heat pooling and pulsing between her legs feels realer than it has some nights when she's awake, Liam or anyone else pressing practiced fingers against it.

"Why…" She struggles to get the words out in haze of her arousal. "Why is it different?"

Than with Liam. Than with anyone. He laughs into her shoulder, mouth still busy against her skin.

"Because you love me, Brainiac."

She stiffens against him.

"I don't."

He breaks away with a sigh, her shoulder feeling cold and exposed where he pushed her shirt aside.

"Are you sure?" He asks gently, studying her.

She's not sure. She's not sure at all.

"No." She says. He's her subconscious. She can't really lie to him. He smirks.

"Well, then."

And then he kisses her, slow and lazy and building. That heat comes back, burning at her cheeks, her neck, throbbing between her thighs.

"Cameron." She gasps, hand going up to sink into his hair. Her fingers fist in that ridiculous hairdo she suspects he spends at least twenty minutes on, and his hand slips around her waist, fingers dipping under the waistband of her jeans. He pushes, pressing her against the wall, and she grinds her hips against him. She's drowning in it, this heat, this want that borders on need.

"Say it again." He growls, nipping at her neck with his teeth. She moans.

"Cameron." His hand tightens on her waist, and her heart stutters. "Cameron."

"Kirsten." He sounds different this time, confused. "Kirsten, wake up."

Her eyes fly open, and she jerks upright in her chair.

"Wh-" She blinks as the light assails her dilated pupils, disoriented. Cameron comes into focus in front of her, and she realizes she's in the lab, that she's awake. She rubs at her eyes, sighing.

"Um." Cameron says, and she drops her hand to look at him. There's a distinct red flush to his face, and he's not actually looking at her, his eyes fixed on her shoulder.

"Are you alright?" She asks, staring at him. He still doesn't make eye contact.

"Yeah, I'm-are you?" His voice sounds strange.

The dream is still there, in the back of her mind. Her gaze travels down his neck, takes in the shallow V of skin exposed before disappearing under the plaid.

"I'm fine." She shrugs. "Just needed a nap, I guess." She stretches with a yawn, throwing her hands up in the air. Her shirt rides up as she does so, and she catches his eyes on the strip of skin exposed at her waist. It's strangely familiar. He averts his gaze, focusing on a lamp behind her.

"Yeah…" He says absently. "You've had a long three days."

She nods. When he continues to stare at the lamp, she crosses her arms.

"Cameron."

"Yeah." He hums without looking at her.

"Cameron." Still nothing. "Why won't you look at me?" She finally asks. He looks startled, sweeping his eyes over to meet hers.

"Wha-I wasn't-" He blushes again, bright red. She watches him curiously.

"What's wrong with you?" She muses, unfolding her legs from beneath her. If there's a slight wetness between her legs she chooses to ignore it.

He looks a little offended.

"Nothing. I'm fine. I'm great."

She rolls her eyes.

" _Cameron_." She sighs.

He rubs at the back of his neck.

"Can you stop that, please?" He mutters, once again avoiding eye contact. She frowns.

"Stop what?"

"Saying my name. I just…you…" He trails off, looking embarrassed. Somewhere in her mind, a lightbulb goes off.

"I was talking in my sleep, wasn't I?" She wonders, knowing it's something Camille has been complaining about ever since the dreams started.

He looks surprised, but nods.

"I said your name?" She continues, and the flush on his face deepens.

"You said it like-"

"I know how I said it." She tells him. She cocks her head, studying him. She doesn't get embarrassed, really, it just seems like a pointless emotion to her. She's thoughtful now, thinking about her dream, thinking about the way Cameron won't look at her and how she could brush all this off and they could probably pretend it never happened.

Instead, she leans forward, catching his face in her hands. She turns it to face her, and his eyes are wide, confused. She kisses him, because she wants to, and because she's curious, and because she's pretty sure Dream Cameron was right about everything.

She doesn't realize what she's looking for until she feels, it that throbbing that's back the second he responds, his arms wrapping around her and dragging her closer, pulling her to her feet. She sighs into his mouth, relieved. She wanted this to be real, wanted to hold on to what she felt in the dream.

She still wants him.

The heat is back, and this time he tastes like coffee and sugar, and this time he smells like something earthy and delicious. He turns her around to press the backs of her thighs against the conference table, and just like that, she remembers where they are.

She puts her palms against his chest and pushes, and suddenly she can breathe and think again as he pulls away.

"Wh-" It's his turn to blink dazedly at her, lips red and swollen, barely a sliver of green left where his eyes have gone black. She can only imagine she looks the same.

"I just wanted to see." She says, voice low and uneven as she struggles to catch her breath.

"See what?" He asks. He's looking at her, just looking, like he could stare for hours and it would never be enough. The throbbing picks back up.

"If he was right." She tells him. He frowns, arms still pinning her against the table.

"If who was right?"

"Dream Cameron." She says.

He raises an eyebrow.

"Dream-Cameron?"

She elbows him.

"Are you just going to repeat everything I say?"

He smiles mischievously.

"Are you just-"

"Cameron." She warns him. His eyes darken, and she remembers what he said earlier. Oops.

He leans forward, pressing his forehead against hers.

"Do you want to get dinner later?" He asks. His lips are so close, and she finds it distracting. The whole thing is fascinating to her, the way him being close sends a haze through her mind, the way she can't seem to look away from him, the way every cell in her body seems to be attracted to him, thrumming with the desire to get closer. It's all new to her. It makes her feel alive in a way she would never have known she was missing.

"We always get dinner." She says, eyes flitting between his and his lips. He rolls his eyes.

"Like a date, Brainiac." He mutters. She freezes.

"What did you just call me?" She asks, voice catching in her throat.

"Brainiac?" He looks concerned. "Just because you're, you know, smart and-"

"Is this real?" She asks, suddenly afraid it's not, suddenly terrified she'll wake up again, really wake up, and all of this will be gone. All of this emotion will just disappear.

"Yeah." He frowns. "Are you okay?"

She bites her lip.

"He said that." She whispers. He just looks confused.

"Who-"

"Dream Cameron." Her heart is beating wildly now, because dissociation is one of the things she actually _is_ afraid of, and what if this isn't real? What if stitching has turned her brain to mush and she'll spend the rest of her life pulled between dream worlds? "Dream Cameron called me Brainiac." She tries to pull herself together, remembering the very first stitch and the way she had to slow her breathing, lower her hear rate.

Cameron brushers his fingers against her cheek.

"Kirsten, look at me." She does, fighting the anxiety that is new, but also familiar since the day she'd had to stitch into Cameron. "I called you that this morning, do you remember? I called you Brainiac at breakfast." His eyes are back to green, and she stares into them, letting the familiar colour drag her back to their conversation at the coffee shop.

" _I want something strong."_

" _So get the light roast."_

" _I said I want something strong, Brainiac."_

" _There's more caffeine in light roast than dark roast, because you lose more caffeine the longer you roast it. And don't call me Brainiac."_

He's right. She remembers being annoyed by it, fighting the urge to stick her tongue out after she corrected him. The panic in her chest begins to dissipate, and she sighs.

"Oh."

"You probably just dreamt it because it was the last thing I called you." He reminds her. She squeezes his arm, a silent thank you. She's not used to being vulnerable in front of people, but it's not as bad with Cameron. She rests her head on his shoulder, and he wraps his arms around her again, and they stay like that for a while.

"My legs hurt." She mumbles, when the table digging into her thighs becomes painful. He jumps backward, apologetic.

"Oh, sorry."

She smiles tiredly.

"It's okay."

"So." He looks suddenly nervous again. "You never really gave me a yes or no on the whole dinner thing."

He's blushing, and she finds that she loves it, wants to know what it feels like when his whole body is hot and pressed up against her.

"Yes." She says. Although she's not sure she'll make it through dinner at this point.

"Any suggestions?" He asks, as they both turn and begin to make their way back to the main lab.

She gives him a pointed look.

"Take-out."

They never even open the cartons.


End file.
